Webwanderer wrote: Doing cannot create duality where none exists. It can only create a sense of duality which has purpose - or it wouldn't exist.

Right, when I say 'create duality' I mean creating the 'perception' of duality ... as you said 'a sense of duality' ... duality itself does not exist of course ... and cannot be 'created' ... you can only create an illusion of duality ... the problem is that when this illusion (or 'mis-take') is created, it influences the reality of your life and emotional state, this illusion can trigger hate, anger, fears, violence, conflicts etc ... this drama could be called 'The Power of Illusion' ... like the mirage of the oasis in the desert can make you run for water ...

When you say "when I say 'create duality' I mean creating the 'perception' of duality", 'you' are acknowledging a doer by expressing yourself as the origin that creates.

create: "to cause to come into being, as something unique that would not 'naturally' evolve or that is not made by ordinary processes."

you can only create an illusion of duality ... the problem is that when this illusion (or 'mis-take') is created, it influences the reality of your life and emotional state, this illusion can trigger hate, anger, fears, violence, conflicts etc

Illusion or not, it remains a creation, by a doer, with experiential intent. Calling it a mis-take, seems to assume it was/is an error rather than a designed opportunity for beneficial exploration. That there are challenges of interaction that often result in conflict and pain, both internal and external, does not lead inevitably to the conclusion of error.

Conditions simply influencing the emotional state is not the whole picture. Those influenced emotional states are an essential guidance mechanism for reminding us who we are and who we are not.

Not exactly, because 'doing' is only an illusion of duality ... reality always remains fundamentally non-dual ... there is no 'doer' ... never has been a 'doer' ...

The best metaphor is the image of the sun and the clouds, when the clouds clutter the sky, we perceive that there is no sun any more ... but the fact is that the sun never disappears really ... it is always there behind the clouds ...

Everything happens within the space of presence, awareness, beingness ...

Onceler wrote:
If you are correct, that would imply we need to live a monastic life of meditation, contemplation......

Well it depends what you call a 'monastic' life of meditation, if you mean a life where you remain in presence, I agree ... if you mean a life where nothing at all happens, a 'static' life, I disagree. Things are done, the world changes, there is movement and impermanence, but there is no doer, it happens 'through' you, not 'by' you ...

"What irritates us about others is an opportunity to learn on ourselves"
(Carl Jung)

Webwanderer wrote:
When you say "when I say 'create duality' I mean creating the 'perception' of duality", 'you' are acknowledging a doer by expressing yourself as the origin that creates.

The 'doer' is thought (the 'maker' of choices) ... and thought is NOT what I am as 'formless awareness' and presence ... thought is just an 'imposter' which creates an erroneous limited identity called ego ... this is the nature of the illusion ... there is no such thing as ego ... just an idea, a concept ... an illusion ...

"What irritates us about others is an opportunity to learn on ourselves"
(Carl Jung)

Webwanderer wrote:
When you say "when I say 'create duality' I mean creating the 'perception' of duality", 'you' are acknowledging a doer by expressing yourself as the origin that creates.

The 'doer' is thought (the 'maker' of choices) ... and thought is NOT what I am as 'formless awareness' and presence ... thought is just an 'imposter' which creates an erroneous limited identity called ego ... this is the nature of the illusion ... there is no such thing as ego ... just an idea, a concept ... an illusion ...

Boy that is quite a limited take my friend Phil. Not a wrong take, but limited in your interpretation.

Limited=looking at part of the picture by placing your own beliefs upon it

non limited=seeing a larger portion of the picture by going beyond our own beliefs and opening up.

Can you know for a fact that thought is an imposter? If there's no such thing as ego, then why the need to talk about it? Clearly, before you encountered spirituality teachings, you (like all of us) were stuck in the belief that you were merely a body/mind. Illusion or not, that belief existed for you just like it existed for me. Therefore, it's completely delusional to say there is no such thing as ego, when we have already established its existence. Ego might very well be an incredibly limited take, but who are we to say that it 'does not exist' and how are we to know that it does not have a purpose here? As long as something is experienced subjectively, it very well exists. You keep going by the idea that there is some sort of objective awakening process, not realizing that perspectives are valid from all angles, even the limited egoic ones. As long as perspective exists, it is valid.

You're entitled to your perspectives of course and I embrace your perspective regardless.

To add to this: when you say....I am this, but I am not that, you are of course creating duality by saying this!

You are formless awareness, but you are also thought. It's this constant silly demonizing of one area of our lives where duality comes into play. Non-dual folks love to embrace this 'non-dual awareness' and them demonize 'ego or thoughts itself', not realizing that true non-duality is embracing the entire picture in realizing that there is nothing that we are not. We are from the greater perspective....this formless awareness, but also fractals smaller, we are also this limited human perspective and fractals smaller, we are cells and particles. How can we say we are something and not another thing? That is limiting yourself to what you believe you are, instead of opening up to a greater perspective on what you actually are.

Webwanderer wrote:
When you say "when I say 'create duality' I mean creating the 'perception' of duality", 'you' are acknowledging a doer by expressing yourself as the origin that creates.

The 'doer' is thought (the 'maker' of choices) ... and thought is NOT what I am as 'formless awareness' and presence ... thought is just an 'imposter' which creates an erroneous limited identity called ego ... this is the nature of the illusion ... there is no such thing as ego ... just an idea, a concept ... an illusion ...

The doer is thought? Thought is a doing. I would suggest that this is a false premiss, and the conclusion becomes an erroneous concept.

Enlightened2B wrote:
Can you know for a fact that thought is an imposter? If there's no such thing as ego, then why the need to talk about it? Clearly, before you encountered spirituality teachings, you (like all of us) were stuck in the belief that you were merely a body/mind. Illusion or not, that belief existed for you just like it existed for me. Therefore, it's completely delusional to say there is no such thing as ego, when we have already established its existence.

When the mirage of the oasis in the desert is seen, the oasis appears to exist and one runs for water ... when the mirage is seen as an illusion, one knows for sure that there is no oasis and never has been ... and no one runs for water any more ... one knows for sure that the oasis never existed and was just an illusion ...

"What irritates us about others is an opportunity to learn on ourselves"
(Carl Jung)

Webwanderer wrote:
When you say "when I say 'create duality' I mean creating the 'perception' of duality", 'you' are acknowledging a doer by expressing yourself as the origin that creates.

The 'doer' is thought (the 'maker' of choices) ... and thought is NOT what I am as 'formless awareness' and presence ... thought is just an 'imposter' which creates an erroneous limited identity called ego ... this is the nature of the illusion ... there is no such thing as ego ... just an idea, a concept ... an illusion ...

The doer is thought? Thought is a doing. I would suggest that this is a false premiss, and the conclusion becomes an erroneous concept.

Can there be a 'doer' outside thought ?

??

"What irritates us about others is an opportunity to learn on ourselves"
(Carl Jung)

rachMiel wrote:I'm with Onceler on this: If all is one, then ALL is one. *Any* division is ultimately an illusory division.

I also agree, it's the great paradox. If every-thing (form and formless) is consciousness and "one" with every-thing else, then there is no-thing outside of this, ever. It may be useful to see form as separate from formless for a time, but that's just mind trying to make sense of what formless means, imo.

Funny. Another thread brought up memories of est, and this one does too. In est there was a saying: "Be, Do, Have." The common perception is that life moves in the opposite order: have, do, be. For example, I weave for fun. So to be a weaver, first I would buy equipment and yarn so I could have the tools I need, then I'd do some weaving, and then all this having and doing would make me become a weaver. This gets you all confused about what the essential thing is--being. You can see it all the time in our consumerist society; people buy running shoes even when they don't run because it makes them think they look like a runner, or people buy fancy kitchen equipment even when they don't do much cooking because they think it makes them look like a chef.

Being is the source of everything. When you shift the order around and see being as the ground from which all else springs, then doing and having are seen as the natural outflow of being. So maybe, as Onceler said, its not being vs. doing. Maybe its seeing the primacy of being and letting doing flow from it.

For example: I learned to weave in college and loved it. Had a loom for awhile but sold it because they take up a lot of room. For years never wove, but I knew it was an essential part of who I am. Then seven years ago while I was doing a weekly TV show in a small town, I was naturally attracted to the weavers in town and did a feature show on them (the wife designed garments and the husband did the weaving--interesting collaboration). As a result of that we did a trade: a small loom for some advertising. It was as if my weaving nature had reached out to the universe and attracted what it needed to be able to do.

KathleenBrugger wrote:
Being is the source of everything. When you shift the order around and see being as the ground from which all else springs, then doing and having are seen as the natural outflow of being. So maybe, as Onceler said, its not being vs. doing. Maybe its seeing the primacy of being and letting doing flow from it.

Enlightened2B wrote:
Can you know for a fact that thought is an imposter? If there's no such thing as ego, then why the need to talk about it? Clearly, before you encountered spirituality teachings, you (like all of us) were stuck in the belief that you were merely a body/mind. Illusion or not, that belief existed for you just like it existed for me. Therefore, it's completely delusional to say there is no such thing as ego, when we have already established its existence.

When the mirage of the oasis in the desert is seen, the oasis appears to exist and one runs for water ... when the mirage is seen as an illusion, one knows for sure that there is no oasis and never has been ... and no one runs for water any more ... one knows for sure that the oasis never existed and was just an illusion ...

Thank you for that non-dual quote that we've all heard a million times before. However, it has nothing to do with my post above. It seems like (yet again), you've chosen to run away from a conversation by throwing up the old 'quotebook' which is a very convenient way to end a conversation.

I just proved to you in my post above that ego very much does exist (regardless of whether or not ego is a limited perspective), and you again, just denied its existence. Ego exists just as much as the next person's perspective exists. If you claim ego is non-existent, then why stop there? Why not claim other perspectives to be non-existent as well?

Therefore, I ask you this.In your own experience and your own words, please describe your own experience with ego. I'm not interested in what Eckhart has to say or other non-dual quotes. I'm interested in your own perspective Phil and why ego is non-existent for you. I've shared my own experience with you. Now I want to hear your experience. Because if you are going to keep on saying that something does not exist (heck, you even started a thread about it), I'd like to know why and how and in what way, it does not exist for you.

To claim a perspective to be illusory is a very limited understanding on why that perspective is there in the first place. illusory is only illusory from the subjective limited perspective that claims as such. If we all have identification at some point or another with the body/mind, that means ego perspective is here for a reason and because it's, because anything exists, is indeed valid. Without an ego perspective, you would have nothing to awaken from/to. From my experience, it's an ever expanding/growing process of greater and greater insight into my own perspective which continues to grow and grow and grow infinitely. It started from the limited ego perspective (which still exists of course) and it has expanded to the realization that first of all, I am Awareness, but I am not just Awareness. I am 'Being' expressing and knowing itself intimately through this beautiful human vehicle on one level and through greater perspectives upon opening up and letting myself go on other levels that I have not yet reached. This human vehicle's perspective is limited in its understanding as is also, the limited perspective of a cell or a particle itself. Consider instead that there is Being knowing itself from an infinite number of perspectives zooming in and zooming out, above and below.

To claim "I am formless Awareness", but I am not thoughts, is such a mis-take, because it's missing the whole point of awakening to what Being/Awareness actually is. Like Di said beautifully above, it might work temporarily in the awakening process, but ultimately, inclusion as opposed to resistance is where true love is.

Enlightened2B wrote:
To claim "I am formless Awareness", but I am not thoughts, is such a mis-take, because it's missing the whole point of awakening to what Being/Awareness actually is. Like Di said beautifully above, it might work temporarily in the awakening process, but ultimately, inclusion as opposed to resistance is where true love is.

Thanks EN2B! It's been awhile since anyone's said I said something beautifully.